


Lover I thru III, The

by thebasement_archivist



Category: The X-Files
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 1998-07-31
Updated: 1998-07-31
Packaged: 2018-11-20 19:53:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11342151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebasement_archivist/pseuds/thebasement_archivist
Summary: Three people have warm thoughts about Mulder.





	Lover I thru III, The

**Author's Note:**

> Note from alice ttlg, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Basement](http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Basement), which moved to the AO3 to ensure the stories are always available and so that authors may have complete control of their own works. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in June 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [The Basement's collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/thebasement/profile).

 

The Lover - Part One: How by HTH

DISCLAIMERS: These characters all, all, all belong to Chris Carter, 1013, and 20th Century Fox. I'm not making any money off of this, but they will, about the time I shell out 7.50 to see the movie on opening night. Which is, these days, my monthly disposable income. So take it and be satisfied, Media Type Guys.  
NOTES: No plot, no sex. Just a little foundation work for upcoming stories, and some exploration of that Mulder Je Ne Sais Quoi. I warn you, the initial premise is quite non-slashy, but before I'm done with him, I think it's safe to say that a lot of Mulder's views on life will have shifted somewhat. It begins in here. Set in the indeterminate space between "Memento Mori" and "Gethsemane"

* * *

The Lover - Part One: How  
by HTH

Of all people, it was my mother who first brought it into the open. As we sat down to Easter dinner, just the two of us, and she said, "I suppose Fox is all alone on a holiday."

"I doubt he's noticed. At eleven-thirty, I doubt he's awake yet."

"Why didn't you invite him?" Every conversation we have about Mulder these days is an accusation. I understand, but it still annoys me. I served out her green bean casserole as efficiently and ruthlessly as I would perform an autopsy.

Mothers are supposed to have a mystical kind of intuition. Mine never did; it is so easy to lie to her in tone, if not in words. Just a little smile, a drink of water to show I am not rushed or tense. "Mulder sees me every day. At least give him Sundays off."

"How can you be so blind, Dana?"

"Mom. Don't, okay?"

"He loves you."

*Do you think I don't know that? Do you think it doesn't break my heart time after time? Am I the Ice Queen now in your eyes, too?*

My mother adores him. She credits him with every miracle that keeps me from death, forgives him for every fleeting insanity that brought me to the edge to begin with. She is charmed by his wit, his occasional awkwardness, his protectiveness, his ties; he is a world apart from the military man she chose, and she loves him for being wild and endangered, like some animal featured on the Discovery Channel. Other parents talk about ponies and cocker spaniels; my mother would like to give her little girl a cheetah to keep her company.

As usual, I didn't cry, but please understand, it isn't always easy. She is my mother, and it hurts that I have to deny her those cherished dreams: the church wedding, the small-voiced "Grandma," the peaceful nights knowing that I am not alone, but only one heartbeat away from everything she chooses to believe can keep me safe, save me. He is Mulder, and it hurts me to deny him anything at all; he has so little.

But I am dying, and I cannot help thinking, *If not now, when? When is my pain about Dana Scully? When can I so much as be sick without it being about Agent Mulder?*

How can I not love him? He inspires me, enrages me, unnerves me, ennobles me. I am with him in spirit every hour of every day. And how can I love him? Does anyone particularly love to breathe? Mulder is biology, chemistry, and physics. Mulder *is.* And there is little else.

* * *

I knew when they had their Policy Meeting about me. I was holing up in the parking garage of an apartment building in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, clicking back and forth between radio stations in a borrowed Celica. It's not stealing if you don't move it out of the parking space, right? I could imagine their cold voices perfectly. *How could this have happened? You told me he was well in hand. We had everything under control. What went wrong?*

I indulged in a little fantasy of crashing their party, just to answer the question. I might have, if I hadn't been afraid it would be the final insult, the one that would mean his death. I would actually enjoy telling those smug bastards the lunatic, but inevitable truth.

Mulder happened. You noxious, carcinogenic shit, you took a hard and untouchable young operative who valued nothing but his own life, and you gave him into the hands of the only man in the world who still loves the truth, who still longs for light. You put me in the presence of true grace and true faith, and you said, "Reduce him to nothing. Make him like you."

Yeah, I was well in hand. Who knew that I was still human when you left me alone with Mulder? I sure as hell didn't, so I don't know how you could be expected to recognize the quality in others.

He always fascinated me. I told him the truth; I *did* follow his career at Quantico, as part of my own lifelong interest in science fiction, in a future of ships and stars. I jumped at that assignment.

How could I ever have been that naive? I thought I was jaded, that I could loot him for knowledge, for insight, and then ruin him, and then walk away, richer in the Consortium's money and in Fox Mulder's secrets, too. An almost perfect deal.

I never intended to gain any more than his secrets, and sure as hell not *him.* Now I carry him everywhere I go, and he is a double-edged blade, drawing blood from each side of me. Alex Krycek, user and killer and hedonist, living his short, experience-soaked life to its dregs, carries a sweet, torturous need for him that never goes away, and can never be filled. He is temptation given a body and an Italian suit, and the part of me that must touch anything exceptional bleeds, because he is not for me. But Alex Krycek, the man who still tears up over Ray Bradbury and worries about highway safety and actually fucking liked being an FBI agent while it lasted -- that man carries Mulder like a too-perfect mirror, and his undoing is that now he can *see,* really see, what a good man is, and there is no denying now that he has never been one.

I believed that one job was as ethical as the next, and who was really ethical, anyway? Powerbrokers, hit men, conspiracies, and fall guys --these things have always existed. If I was determined to thrive in a bleak and unsympathetic world, well, weren't we all?

Mulder is the most extreme of possibilities. A man of honor in a world where honor is as much a mutation as eyelids on a flatworm. And I was more open to extreme possibilities than anyone knew I could be. Especially me.

* * *

There are days I don't know how I let him do the things he does. I have wild fantasies of clubbing him over the head with my stapler, smuggling him into Canada, forcing him to live an ordinary life. I can see him fishing (he takes a gory delight in baiting the hook; his sense of the macabre always made my toes curl), driving me into town to rent movies (he berates the hapless Blockbuster girl because they don't stock *Baron Munchausen*; he's developed a true love-hate relationship with country living), and searching the web for used CDs from obscure '70s bands (marking his territory with sunflower seeds, like a giant nesting squirrel; God, I've become a pathetic sap).

Anywhere but here, Fox. Anything but this.

And yet I say nothing, and sign his 302s, and wait for him to come home again, battered and electric and more devoted than ever to his quest.

I love him, but I'm no fool. I love him for having the courage of his convictions, but if I had the choice, he'd be doing surveillance for the rest of his life. Anything to make him safe; how do you protect a man like Mulder?

Either way I lose him. And I never had him.

So I grit my teeth, and sign his 302s, and tell myself that he's a comet, an omen visible from my world for this one moment in history, and all I can do is let him be beautiful, and try to be standing somewhere else when he comes crashing down.

He has no idea how I feel about him, thank God. If he were ever mine, how could I sign the 302s? How could I open my hand and let Fox Mulder seek the sky one more time? I couldn't, that's how. Not if my eyes alone could see the ghost-marks of that same hand on his body.

When he is dead (and this will kill him; I cannot bring myself to believe otherwise), I will leave the FBI. I will find someplace clean. If I were a rational man, I would leave now. But, dammit, dammit, I can still see him through the smoke. He is a fire that will consume me before he burns himself out, and the hell of it is I don't think he'll ever even notice. Or maybe the hell of it is that I will let him. When you've only got the one source of light, you just can't be picky.

 

* * *

 

DISCLAIMERS: Chris Carter, 1013, Fox. 'Nuff said.  
WARNINGS: No plot, no sex. The quote in this section is pulled from the episode "Squeeze." Krycek's section contains a description of events in "Ascension," and Skinner's quotes come from "One Breath." No copyright infringement was intended, heck no.

* * *

The Lover - Part Two: First Sight  
by HTH

*Do you think I'm spooky, Scully?*

I always knew he needed me. Mulder is a man who lives between the Scylla of his work, forced into obscurity by the concerted efforts of a shadow conspiracy, and the Charybdis of his reputation, fueled by the very passion and integrity that makes him so exceptional. If he would just *lie* occasionally, he might not sound like a madman quite so often. The truth drives him. I'm still waiting for it to set him free.

But I am familiar with his work, the best and the worst of it, and I do not judge anyone by reputation alone. I have elevated the X-Files from Mulder's sad obsession to Mulder's pride and joy. I have contradicted him, sometimes with good cause, and sometimes because I too am excruciatingly exact, and an unexplained phenomenon is no less unexplained because Fox Mulder can call upon all the resources of an astronomical IQ and an Oxford education to snow out something vague about volcanos, soul transference, syzygy, or mushrooms, all with an appealingly sincere look on his face. *Because* I have contradicted him, he treasures the cases where I do not. They give him worth, legitimacy; he would scoff at the idea, but even Mulder needs to be vindicated by the cruel world now and then.

There are so many things that the cancer prevents me from telling him; I don't want to change anything now, to leave him unsure as to who I really was. I am his security, and he is so convinced that he understands me. How can I tell him that I, too, want to believe? In the beginning, maybe we fit our paradigms: the simple dialectic of skeptic and believer. But I have seen so much. I believe, now, that science does not cast its net as far as I once thought. The real difference, ironically, is that Mulder hates to leave things unexplained. I don't mind, particularly. Call a spade a spade, my father always said. It's Mulder who rushes headlong into everything, determined to make it as pat as an episode of *Scooby-Doo* (So, Professor Derryberry, it was YOU all along!), no matter how convoluted a narrative he has to produce. I don't mind leaving it unexplained. Evidence can neither confirm nor deny, etcetera. But as far apart as our perspectives still are in many ways, I want him to succeed, and soon, and in a way that can never be forgotten. Soon, Mulder. Please, I want to be here to see the look on your face.

Debunk the X-Files? No, not from the minute I laid eyes on him, and saw a man who seemed literally illuminated by his faith. That is so rare these days, rare and holy. The FBI's most unwanted...well, Mulder, what coward ever wanted to sit down with a brave man? 

Mom told me that Mulder once asked about my cross, and that she hadn't known how to answer him. If it ever comes up between us, I do know how to answer. I wear a cross because I love the idea that a man might choose to walk a painful and lonely road, might choose the truth in the face of lesser men's hate. I have given myself over to Mulder's truths, and now suddenly I am the one on the dark road. With Mulder always trying to carry my cross for me.

Damn you. Damn you, Mulder. I'm your partner. I can't be your equal if you won't let me suffer what you are prepared to suffer. I know you think I didn't choose this path, but I did. I'm dying for this, and can't you see how cheap you make it by insisting that I'm the victim of your search? Why can't you believe that after four long years, I care about the X-Files as much as you do? That I might choose to be here and bear my own consequences?

*Do you think I'm spooky, Scully?*

My Scylla is that, yes, I think Mulder is *spooky.* I think he's terrifying. He's a storm at sea, and I don't know where I will find myself when it passes. I have always found the unknowable, not illegitimate, but...spooky.

My Charybdis is that, no, I think he's a genius. I trust him absolutely. I believe in Mulder, and I believe that sooner or later we'll have our miracle, whatever it may be.

I live between faith and fear. I do it because I choose to. But I'm having too much trouble staying afloat to be Mulder's lover, too. I am on the road, I am under the cross, I am in the storm, and I cannot stop now. Not even for his love.

\-----------------------------------------------------

It all changed on Skyland Mountain. I lost my arm in Siberia, but I lost my life on Skyland Mountain -- everything I believed, everything I knew to be true.

I knew a man would be careful with his life, hovering so precariously above the earth. And then I watched Mulder push that damn cable car until I was more afraid for his life than I've ever been for my own. I wasn't thinking of any assignment when I turned that car off; I would have cheerfully killed anyone who had tried to stop me. I'm surprised I remembered to hit the operator -- but that's the story of my life, everything slips through the fingers except the things you probably shouldn't have been planning in the first place. The only thing on my mind just then was, *I'll do anything, Mulder, just don't die.*

And then he tried to crawl the fucking cable, and it all tore loose inside me. Cancerman wanted to *stop* this man? Not fucking likely. Not without a chainsaw. Fox Mulder was a man in love, and by God, if this wasn't what love looked like. It defied power, and gravity, and logic, everything except maybe time. Love was all too aware that time is fleeting.

It was my job to cost him time. It was a close thing; I had to start the car early, because any sane person could see that he was just going to get himself killed. I hadn't been given any orders to cover that eventuality, which was good, because it kept me from having to disobey them. He almost made it in time.

Me? I was shaking, and so relieved I was afraid I'd cry. Cry! I don't ever remember crying, though I'm sure I have at one time or another, probably. But at that moment I felt like crying, because it was all just so horribly clear.

Love was fearless, and it admitted no judicious retreat. Loving someone was possible, it happened; I'd just witnessed it with my own eyes. It was real, and it all came down to one ridiculously simple promise.

*I will not let you go. They'll have to take you from me, against everything I am.*

Imagine that. Alex Krycek suddenly groks the eternal mystery. And, like all good mysteries, it was obscenely easy, once you had that one, perfect clue. In my case, the clue just happened to be the answer, too.

They haven't taken Mulder yet, and I damn well haven't let him go. It's been a hell of a ride, keeping the Consortium convinced that I was still their boytoy, while I cultivated my own contacts, found my own sources. Building up the resources to back him all the way to the top, while avoiding the executioner's bullet. It's a game I haven't won yet; there have been plenty of setbacks, and I've had to do a few things along the way that still turn my stomach a little, even with my moral dipstick being what it is. But I'm alive, and Mulder is alive, which means we still have time. Time is the only thing that love respects.

Oh, I'm not crazy. I know it's not me he loves. I was out of *that* game before I even joined the team; Dr. Dana Scully remains undefeated. Somebody give her the fucking gold and get it over with. Shit, I know he hates my guts. Someday, I'd like to think I'll have a chance to explain it all to him, and that he'd believe me. But that's not the point.

The point is that I've been *inspired,* by the finest man I know. Beaten up a lot, too, but definitely inspired. And it won't matter, in the long run, whether I die peacefully in Fox Mulder's bed, or young in an alley with a clip emptied out between my eyes. As long as I get one more chance to feel that thing I felt on Skyland Mountain -- sheer awe, that a human can be so *much.* Only next time, I want to feel it about Alex Krycek.

When my ship comes in, when I've had my chance, I'll be ready for anything. I won't have one qualm about looking death in the eye. I'll say, *Yeah, but I never let him go. I've had a hell of a life, but they had to fucking take us apart. Against everything I am.*

\-----------------------------------------------------

*Let it go, Agent Mulder!*

*Like hell.*

It's a funny thing to fall in love with, isn't it? Two words, flat and almost bored. The vague, meaningless hand gesture. A back turned toward me. (Ah, but what a back -- shoulders like a Greek hero, a Jason or a Perseus-- Jesus *Christ,* Skinner. You're pretty fucking far gone.)

But that must have been the beginning, because that's when I decided to hell with them all, and if someone was going to pay in blood for Agent Scully's death, it wasn't going to be the man who was paying for it in pain. It was damn well going to be the devil picking up the check this time.

I thought it might ease him, a little. Things worked out differently, though, and I can live with that, too. If Cancerman had died, someone else just would've taken his place, and we would always have the dirty secret of his murder standing between us.

Of all my memories, *Like hell* is the one that calls up the strangest rush of pleasurable sensations. Pride in him, as though I had something to do with his bravery or his devotion. A warm rush of relief, because at that moment I thought he was a dead man, and to date he is still alive, causing me heartburn and hard-ons. Respect, and an angry kick of adrenaline, just for excitement, because how *dare* he just dismiss me like that, when I'm the one who makes sense, who's trying to save his sorry life? Only Mulder can brush off an AD quite like that, and only Mulder can make my heart race and my temperature rise, in red rage as well as red desire. It's a turn-on, in more ways than I've been able, or entirely willing, to deconstruct just yet.

Here's a truly amusing anecdote. Both Mulder and Scully are working here because of an FBI policy I helped construct, to facilitate entry into the Bureau of female, minority, and disabled agents. Back when I was more idealistic. If good old-fashioned male bonding hadn't kept Scully out ten years ago, it's fair to suppose that her height would've been a major stumbling block. We're expected to intimidate, you know. Federal agent. Drop your weapon. Who would have known that she'd be so good at it, if there hadn't been a policy in effect that adjusted the physical requirements for female candidates? And would she even have been singled out if we hadn't been looking for women to recruit?

As for Mulder, that policy was his ticket, the only thing that could have served to counterweight his vision impairment. That's what we call it, in the '90s. Used to be color-blindness, and now it's vision impairment. We still call people like Mulder disabled, but now we let them be FBI agents.

So I got them into this, in a half-assed sort of way. Squeaking in along the margins -- then setting up shop there. Marginal, yeah, that's the X-Files for you. The word comes up all the time in staff meetings. Agent Mulder's somewhat, ahem, ahem, *marginal* projects. Just a bit more out in the open than AD Skinner's somewhat, ahem, ahem, *marginal* preferences.

Hell, maybe that's what I love about him. That he shouldn't be here, that he works in the copy room, that his cases take him to Aubrey, Missouri and Gibonstown, Florida and Jerk-off, Wisconsin, that he believes in the Whammy and could author the Trivial Pursuit Heinous Murders Edition and takes advice from a man named Frohike. That's a name? Frohike? That Mulder lives and thrives and grows brave on what, in a lesser life, would be waste, a disability. That most of us live in the shadows because we have no choice; the bright lights of Mainstreet, USA just don't want us. But not Mulder. He has a love affair with the shadows, the margins, the eccentrics, the victims. It 's as if I can see those soft, dark, unknown places within his eyes now, and they are strange and inexplicably beautiful. Nothing to fear at all.

The world would turn against the marginal, the minority, the disabled, the bizarre. Cut it all loose and hope it floats away, weird cults and gay men and alien abductees. Let it go, Agent Mulder. *Like hell.*

 

* * *

 

DISCLAIMERS: These characters belong to Chris Carter, 1013 Productions, and Fox. Don't sue; I'm unarmed.  
WARNINGS: This is not the episode where Mulder's source, shot on a deserted bridge by the Crew-Cut Man has a near-death experience involving a fog machine and an imaginary nurse. It does contain sex, so if you are underage or the idea of sexual activity between a man and a woman offends you (you never know with these net weirdos), avoid. Parts two and three will, as I'm sure you've guessed, be much more on-topic for this particular list. If you're a purist, you could always, as suggested, skip this one.

* * *

The Lover - Part Three: Deep Breath  
by HTH

Sex has never been my favorite thing in the world, actually. Not that I dislike it. The sex part is actually fairly appealing. It's the end I prefer to avoid, when you lie in bed and wonder if he was thinking about any of the same things you were, if it felt even similar for him. Better, worse, what? You never really know, do you? And to be that close to someone, and to feel so inalterably removed, so totally separate.... I'd just rather not, most of the time.

Maybe I'm a romantic. Maybe I believe in Prince Charming -- the union of bodies and the communion of souls.

Maybe I'm an idiot. I think it would be different with Mulder.

It's the hands that do it, every time. He touches me like no one ever has, as if his hands were quiet birds, coming home to roost. Every touch is the last word in intimacy, and yet it never feels invasive. It's like a secret code language, as if Mulder were the one man in the world who really *can* speak with his body.

If anyone could.... I'm not a physical person. The body is just a machine to me -- fix, replace, maintain, do without. Life takes place in the surreal mazes of our histories, our fears, our aspirations. Mysteries for the psychologists, or the priests. Mulder is the opposite. To him, it's the mind that is the machine, every gear turning other gears, producing speech and motion, and he is the engineer, the profiler, master of action and reaction. Mystery, transcendence, that's in the body for Mulder. I've heard of the runner's high; Mulder is the only person I ever knew who lived it.

That could be why I've always allowed him to touch me so familiarly. To hell with it -- why I've always *wanted* him to. It is the way he speaks to me. I don't know what else to call it. From the first night, when he examined my mosquito bites with patient and respectful hands, I knew that this man was present in his body, in the places our bodies met, like no one else in the world. It's the only way to get at Mulder, to know him.

And there's the common, carnal thrill, too. When he touches me with that hunger in his eyes and his fingers, it burns straight through, and I have to take a deep breath to steady myself, no matter where I am.

He can be rough, too, pushed by his hunger. Not rough, but --possessive. His hands say, *Dana, don't push me away. Listen....* Ah, Mulder. I can hear it. But it's the afterglow I really hate.

I've learned, recently, not to fight the fantasies. Dying in denial isn't helpful for anyone. So I let them come now, cutting and pasting like a pagemaker program. His hands, not here but *there.* His long, reclining body, not in that bed but in *this* one. I know him well. I can be very realistic.

He begins explosively, because that first rush of enthusiasm is always the most overwhelming for Mulder. He crushes me, kissing me, saying, *Dana, what could ever come between us?* until I am quietly unbraided, falling lightly and willingly against him, subsumed in the chakra heat from his open mouth and from between his legs. (Subsumed... Well, that's the fear, isn't it, Dana Scully? That you might fall into him and never return.)

Mulder kisses my face, his hands all over my back, trying to speak, dazed but certain that at times like this a person ought to say something. It's my job, of course, to keep him on task, and so I reach up to touch his cheek, and kiss his lips with as much soft friction as I can manage. "Not with your voice, Mulder," I tell him. "Just touch me." That way, he knows that I understand.

He is the first large man since my father that I do not feel overshadowed by, as though I had to keep an eye out for any sign that he would try to cow me with his size. I love his size, the way his fingers can brush the back of my neck while my cheek rests in his palm. The way he shields all vision from me when he stands close by. I feel snugly tucked away from the world. Mulder can hold me, body and soul, and I heard his meaning a hundred times in his touch before he ever found the courage to say it aloud: *It feels so good to put my arms around you.* That was rare and lovely honesty from Mulder. It was worth contempt of Congress. (How easily you trade away your life, piece by piece, for kind words from this man. Admit it, Dana. You no longer own yourself. But dammit, I do! I must.)

His hand presses between our bodies, between my breasts, while he strokes my hair and fills my mouth with his slow-dancing tongue. That hot, organic taste, the taste of the body, which so often seems to carry with it a preface to the scent of decay, this time does not remind me of the operating theater, the medical examiner's office, at all. It only reminds me of Mulder, and I suddenly need to taste him all over. To put my signature on him. (You can't afford to lose, Dana. He must come away from this yours, or he will make you his. You are stronger than Mulder, but he is so vast.)

But I am doomed to lose. The passion shifts, and he is tender, not desperate, saying, *Dana, I adore you.* His lips are recreating reality all over my forehead, my eyelids, my cheek, and it is a cool, Monet watercolor kind of reality. Mulder kisses like water lilies. His hands push away my clothes, holding my limbs as I tense up slightly. He's saying, *I never wanted you to hide from me, and you never have,* and I'm agreeing, opening my stance, making sounds in my throat. He lies back on the bed, drawing me down on top of him.

Because it's Mulder, he sprawls. No self-consciousness at all, just a simple, very masculine, assumption that he deserves every inch of space that he can manage to occupy at once. I know that I have lost, because my fingers are making marks on his chest, lost in the dark hair, and my legs are shaking badly, and I'm forcing his mouth open with my tongue now, while he wraps his legs loosely around me and caresses the back of my neck and up to the base of my skull. Now my space is his, I'm breathing his air, and *Dana* must be my name, because he just groaned it, and he'd never dare forget my name, even though I have. *Mulder* is the only word I know now. For all I know, *Mulder* is the only word I've really spoken at all for four years now.

He gets inside me, finally, and as far as I'm concerned, *Mulder* isn't even a name now. It's a definition. It's the point where science and God meet, or maybe where they diverge, and didn't we always need a word for that anyway? Mulder fucks like a Georgia O'Keefe, in clean, stark, graceful sweeps.

It's the afterglow I hate. This time there would be no loneliness, no sense of post-coital isolation. This time I know all his thoughts, and the DNA coding of his whole life is burned into my body. I have become his gospel, and my one word now is *Yes.*

Even in my fantasies, you see, it ends in utter disaster. The world only needs one Mulder. And he needs a Scully. I would fail us both, completely, if I became Mulder's *yes.*

It feels good to have his arms around me. It feels complete, as though the circuit has closed and we suddenly share everything. And I want to share everything. But making love to Mulder is like sharing your trailer park with a tornado. I know him. I know how he is.

So I have the fantasy now, but then I take a deep breath, and clear my head, and remember that we have completion between us, where we both stand in balance, and I give him my love, and I choose to say *yes* to him sometimes, and *no* many others, and usually *Mulder, what are you *talking* about?* We are where we belong.

(You are, anyway. A warm and well-lit place, rich with the sensual mysteries of friendship and synergy. For him, it's a barren and clinical world; he reaches out for transcendence, for the grail of your body, and you condemn him to the machine. Your soul is his science, Dana. Only your touch transforms.)

Well, to hell with him. I'm giving my *life* for Mulder's desires. He can have my work or my body, but both is too much, too deep.

If he could just take my love for what it is. Mulder, you always did spoil things, wanting them to be more than they really were. For God's sake, Mulder, find something good and let it be, just once, *enough* for you.

\---------------------------------------------------------

The closest we ever came to fucking was that time in Hong Kong, and don't let him tell you otherwise. That grip on my wrists, the way he forced my arms back. I could feel his thighs, the muscles trembling against mine. Even the gun -- for shit, *especially* the gun, made it an erotic high like I've rarely had. He's so intense, and when he's focused on you, it's like you can die or you can come, but not much else. And he wanted it. Don't let him tell you differently.

I have a hundred and fifty fantasies about Mulder, and none of them are cute little Hollywood pieces; no goddamn way Tom Hanks is playing me in the big-screen version. Look, there are bars where you can get nice queers in suits who renew their subscriptions to *Genre* regularly and have satellite dishes and hang-ups, but you don't waste a man like Mulder on that kind of house-beautiful crap.

We're talking about a man who can grind you into a wall in a Hong Kong airport and have you twelve seconds from screaming *fuck me fuck me fuck me* in every language you know, simultaneously, if bonus points are involved. A man who goes on the prowl, when life gets to be too much for him, wearing black jeans and a turtleneck and a leather jacket, holding that handgun like it was a sex toy. Hey, if he says it is, it is.

That's one of my fantasies. His gun, cocked and ice-cold, raising goosebumps all over my skin as Mulder fucks me. Maybe him in a chair, and me straddling his lap, and the gun all over my back, up the back of my neck, right under my ear as the safety goes off. Click. And if he wants me dead, I'm dead. But he doesn't. He pulls the gun around, and I'm shaking as he puts it under my chin, tilting my head back, tugging at my hair to make me press down on him, take him deeper. Then it's on my lips, and I'm kissing the barrel of his gun, just barely, licking it tentatively. And he's growling, and tensed up to come, and death has never been this close. I've never wanted to live this much.

For this kind of fantasy, you can't just grab the Washington Blade personals. You need a man who makes your spine go to goddamned Ramen noodles, whose lips alone are a wet dream, who smacks you like he needs it to live. Oh, yeah, Mulder. You want me to bruise for you? Want to look at me and know you had me, any way you had the guts to take me? Sure thing. I've been bruised for many a less noble cause.

Let's get one thing straight, all you Junior Freuds. I am not suffering from some kind of penny-ante leatherboy masochism, where I want Mulder to hurt me because I recommended his partner's execution and I think I deserve it, or because I did some other damn thing and I want to be punished. For some of us, punishment lost all its charm *real early* in life. Put down the Cosmo Do You Have What It Takes To Be A Profiler? survey.

If I like it rough, it's just that you get inured to life so damn fast these days. After a couple of years on the run, you don't always notice things anymore -- things like the cold, or you bust your lip in a bar fight, or you get blown in an alley. Mundane things. It takes an extra shot of anything to get through the shields, or at least to wake you up a little.

There's one. I'd like to have him in an alley, some really filthy alley somewhere that no one speaks English, Buenos Aires or Athens or, hell, Hong Kong. I'd get his shirt up enough that his back would scrape raw against the bricks, and go down on him, right down on my knees. He's such a prince of a guy, he'd probably feel like a bastard for letting anyone, even me, do him like that, like a whore, and get nothing out of the deal. He'd worry about that one for days; why would I spontaneously offer to bring him to a screaming orgasm unless I had an ulterior motive? Paranoid fuck would go straight back to DC and offer up his sweet ass to the boys in Toxicology, demanding to know if I'd coated his dick in some kind of weird extraterrestrial poison.

It's the little things you gotta love about Mulder.

The blow job in the car is kind of a classic, but Mulder drives like a brain-damaged Rhesus monkey at the best of times. I'm sorry, by dangerous sex, I don't mean the kind where spears of glass bisect your skull. I got a broken beer bottle in the knee once, and that's as far as it goes. Of course, it's just a fantasy, but what is the point of imagining Mulder if he's not going to be, you know, *Mulder*?

Or how about a cavalry scene -- Cancerman's thugs finally run me down, and they're going to beat me into a coma before they kill me and go for a beer. Mulder shows up out of nowhere, plugs one of them, and they scatter. There I am, and this time it's some American alley, Miami, maybe, and I'm beat to shit, bleeding, my clothes all torn apart, without even the keys to my car. Mulder hauls me up, eyes like mountains, and before I can get halfway through thanking him, he just slams me into the hood of his car, bent over, and holds my head down with hard fingers in my hair, his thumb stroking the base of my skull in a kinky parody of tenderness, while he unfastens his belt with the other hand, and he does me hard and brutally, hissing something in my ear the whole time -- "How does it feel not to be the one doing the fucking, Krycek?" Something like that. It doesn't take long, and it hurts, but I'm still hard, because it smells like him and sounds like him and I love him so goddamn much, and I'm crying, really crying, like he just broke my heart.

But I know my G-man, and he's just a big pussycat. As soon as he's gotten off, he's all shocked with himself, and his arms are around my waist, and he's apologizing, over and over, and the back of my neck is wet now. "Don't cry," I order him, beginning to get pissed off now.

"Why not? You are." This guy has a weird-ass fixation with *fair.* It's like a damn fetish with him.

"Fuck off, Mulder. You don't even know why."

"So tell me." So gentle, so reasonable.

But I don't. I just shake my head. Mulder gets down on his knees and soaks the inside of my thighs with wet, soothing kisses that take my mind off the pain in my ass. I can feel his soft hair brushing between my legs, and I cry enough for twenty-seven goddamn years. His hand strokes the front of my thigh, then begins to pump my cock, not even saying a word about why it's hard when he just reamed me out like Joey the Mook from cell block nine. He's whispering against my ass; his lips are like feathers, and his voice is low and husky. "Why are you crying, Alex?"

And I can't help it, words rise in me, pouring into my mouth like the blood that's emptying into my cock. "Because I love you so much. Because I'd let you do it all over again, if it meant you'd stay a little while. Mulder...."

He brings me off while he kisses my ass cheeks all over, so tenderly. My cum is splattered all over the side of his car, and I've collapsed there, like I won't ever move again.

That's the kind of kinky shit I make up, lying alone in Dark Hotel Room #5,812, gun right beside my hand, wearing my jeans and a jacket with plenty of pockets, because there's always the chance you'll have to jump ship right fucking now, and no one wants to do that naked with no ID or cash or anything. On a good night, it's that kind of shit.

On a bad night, I don't imagine anything but his body covering mine, right there, in the dark. His arms go around me, under the jacket, and he's kissing my throat, right under the jaw, and when he sucks my earlobe between his teeth I'm gone, gone, gone, I can't even get a deep breath. It's him, and he's so relentlessly gentle, and all I can do is hang on and let him dry-hump me, slow like August afternoons, while his fingers play with my nipple, and I'm taking in the smell of his shampoo (Ivory -- I remember from the gym showers) and holding him like aliens are going to lock him in a tractor beam and pull him away any second. And even in real life I'm making pleading noises, and saying "Mulder, love you," in a chokey voice, because I can't fucking breathe.

Yeah, it's a real fucking comfort to have the ol' fantasy life when you're on the road.

I should've kissed him in Hong Kong. Who knows if there will ever be another time; Tunguska didn't turn out to be a real mood-setter.

Shoulda, shoulda, shoulda, Alex. Fucking tell me about it.

\----------------------------------------------

I guess I don't fantasize about him much. Well, I do and I don't. Every time I lay eyes on him, I notice. What does he think I am, that I'm not excited by those casual, feline stretches, or his slow, premeditated smiles, or the view from behind him? (Straight, Skinner. Or was that a rhetorical question?) I feel myself getting warm and nervous, and I have a choice between glaring at him more sternly than ever or running my fingers through his hair. Like a rat in a maze, I pick the same door every time: the one marked Don't Quit Your Day Job, Walt. The one with the food behind it, as it were.

But those aren't so much fantasies as they are passing moments, when I let myself be absorbed into the aura of sweltering sensuality he projects, let it play across my skin, under my clothes, raising my nipples and the hair on my arms and sometimes even my cock, if the day has been particularly stressful. If I'm particularly in need of Mulder's unique ability to break up the uninspired monotony of the 9 to 5 grind.

That's at the office. At home, I try not to think of him. I watch a lot of CNN, and I recently bought a Soloflex machine. I have hobbies: I build 3-D puzzles of places like Notre Dame and Buckingham Palace, and the occasional model airplane, too. I make my own pasta; I read Stephen King (though as a rule of thumb I prefer his Bachman work); I drink Scotch. What I don't do is fantasize about my agents.

Sounded pretty good, didn't it? Again, the truth is, I do and I don't. I *think* about him all the time. I stand out on my balcony and imagine him leaning over the railing (he looks distracting as hell in a dark suit, but oh *God,* his ass in a pair of tight jeans....) and rattling on about some cable special about how the Pharoahs probably had electrical generators, while the wind plays with his hair and gives him a flushed and exhilarated look. Or I sit in front of the tv with a plate of lasagna, imagining that he's sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of me, on his third serving, calling the *20/20* anchors government lapdogs while I run my foot up and down his bare back.

If I'm feeling especially masochistic, I fantasize about an alternate reality, where I can take him out for a night on the town, dinner and a show at the Kennedy Center, and maybe to a little piano bar late at night, where all the waitresses flirt with him until he moves his chair closer to me and puts his head on my shoulder. I put my arm around him; he picks up my hand to check my watch; we drink out of the same wineglass. I touch a light finger to the outside edge of his ear and say, "When did I lose my heart to you?" He smiles in satisfaction and says something flippant like, "I palmed it the other night while I was sucking your nipple," or, with perfect innocence, "I find the weirdest things sometimes." Yeah, Mulder would say something like that, something to make me laugh. And outside the office, I would let go and laugh. Show him how good he can make me feel.

Right, Skinner. You might as well waste your time dreaming about a commitment ceremony at the National Cathedral, or a tryst on the Orient Express, complete with a fedora and Mulder in his trench (trench coats were *made* for shoulders like his; the drape is geometrically perfect). Agent Mulder, I'll be accompanying you personally on your search for the Maltese Falcon.... I have to grin at the image of Agent Scully in a little black cocktail dress, with Derringer pistol concealed in her garter. All sheerest fantasy.

The point is that I don't usually engage in torrid skin-flick imagery. Sure, he's the sexiest man I know, and I get a wicked, shivering thrill every time I see him. But even in my wildest dreams, I don't really know how to approach him. What would he want, if he wanted me at all? Tenderness, to be reassured that *he,* at least, Is Not Alone? The kind of blitzkrieg passion that leaves no room for doubt or guilt or thought, release from the perpetual demands of his too-keen mind? Slow lovemaking, the kind that lasts all weekend and allows you to pretend there is no outside world, no problem in your life more pressing than the unhurried pace of your lover's hand over your skin? A chance to let his native playfulness run wild, to be awkward and needy and teasing and to overflow with words? Yes, yes, yes. I could do anything he wanted, anything he asked of me. Jesus H. Christ. We could make love on Mars, if it would make him happy. All I want is Mulder; the rest is slippery in my mind.

I do have a kind of...secret fantasy. It came out of nowhere, really, not my usual style at all. Here's how it goes.

One afternoon, maybe on a holiday weekend, when Agent Scully has left early to drive to a family event, I call him into my office. I'm standing up to greet him, and he walks directly up to me, suspecting nothing. "You wanted to see me, sir?"

"Yes," I say shortly. I move quickly, and because I have this planned and he is completely off his guard, he's flat on his back in a hot second, with one wrist in the handcuffs. His mouth is open in shock as I thread the cuffs behind the leg of my desk and snap them onto the other wrist. Now I am over him on all fours, watching the shock on his face dissipate into impatience, confusion, uncertainty, amazement. He wears them all well.

Mulder jerks his arms, testing the chain and cuffs to assure himself that this is all real. "Skinner, what the hell is this?" he demands. "Take these off of me." I shake my head, once. For the first time, he looks worried, and his tall frame tightens up, ready to struggle against whatever comes next. "What's going on here?"

"What's the problem, Agent Mulder?"

He can't help laughing, but it's in disbelief, not amusement. "I've been taken prisoner in the damn Hoover building. You need more?"

"You're so overdramatic. If I were trying to kidnap you, don't you think I would have knocked you cold, or at least gagged you? Did you lock the door as you came in?" He shakes his head. "Then I'm the one in a world of trouble if you start calling for help, aren't I?"

As he tries to puzzle through the situation, I begin to undo his tie. "That's my tie." The unfamiliarity factor is blunting his wit.

"You don't need it."

"I *like* it."

"I was afraid of that. Relax, Agent Mulder. You'll get it back." He lies very still as I unbutton his shirt and let it hang open along with his jacket. I begin to kiss his collarbone, and he cries out, very softly. "Hush," I say simply.

He is shaking his head. "This is *not* happening. Skinner, are you crazy?"

Raising my head, I meet his eyes. "Are you afraid?"

Mulder opens his mouth, and realizes that for once he doesn't have an instant comeback. I watch his eyes soften, turning inward, considering the question, and I give him time, brushing that shock of hair out of his eyes. "Not of you," he finally admits, looking as though this were an idea he'd never considered before.

"Ever been with a man before, Agent Mulder?"

And now he smiles. Sublime. "Not since my wild college days."

I'm unfastening his pants, innocently saying, "Didn't I hear something on the BBC several years back about a rash of broken hearts in the United Kingdom?"

He laughs, and it catches in his throat. He is laboring to breathe now as my fingers creep into the waistband of his shorts. Each deep breath expands his narrow, muscular chest. I'm transfixed by the sight. "Breaking hearts isn't really my game."

"Oh, you don't think so?" I can't help growling it a little as I pull shorts and pants together down his hips, freeing his erection to spring up against his belly.

His eyes are very wide, very dark. He shakes his head slightly. "Is this some kind of trap?"

"Agent Mulder, are you accusing me of blackmail?"

"No -- I just...." He licks his lips as I kiss just above his navel. "I didn't plan this," he falters.

Lightly, like a tendril of air, I brush up the underside of his shaft, and he jerks his head to the side, eyes closed. "Hush. Hush. I know. That's why I'm doing it. You would never...factor this into your schedule." It comes out wry, but not bitter, not really. "You have the time. Just lie back."

He is not used to indulgence, or to surrender. For a while he will relax, as my fingers stroke his chest and my lips kiss up his erection, then back down. Then he shies suddenly, trying to pull away, saying, "Walter, I can't. It's too much...."

I hold him to the floor, claiming him with my hands, nestling my own erection into his hipbone. "Shut up, Agent Mulder."

"It's not safe." I know he doesn't mean physically. He laughs crazily. "Does this mean I'm employee of the month?" I chuckle, and let my mouth sink down over him. "Fuck!" he cries out, startled by the pleasure. "Stop...."

My hand slips comfortingly up his side, gentling him. I suck harder, then pause to look up at him. His head is arched back, his hands flexing helplessly. "Stop?" I ask.

"Aw, shit." Mulder sighs, and draws a shuddering breath. "Just do it."

That's where the fantasy generally trails off, before his orgasm. Chickenshit of me, I know. But as delightful as it is, this isn't a line of thought that makes me...comfortable. I can't afford to be the rat with the low score. Have to remember to keep picking the door with the food, and leave the other door strictly alone. Fantasies are tricky, when focus is the key word.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, I just can't. It's too much.... Not safe.

Goddamit, Skinner. *Stop....*


End file.
